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Saturday, August 2, 2014

"BEST PLACE IN CALIFORNIA" --Richard Henry Dana (1835)

BAYSIDE TRAIL
CABRILLO NATIONAL MONUMENT

One of my favorite hikes is the Bayside Trail,
located at Cabrillo National Monument on the southern tip of the
Point Loma peninsula. It is a 1.86 mile loop that offers a spectacular
view of theocean, Ballast Point, Coronado, downtown San Diego, and
Tijuana,on a clear day.

It is also the view that Richard Henry Dana
(1815-1882) enjoyed when he arrived at Point Loma at sunset on March
13, 1835. Hewas a common seaman on the Pilgrim, which was one
of manycattle hides. He lived and worked at La Playa, an area of beach
justnorth of Ballast Point. This is where they cured the local hides
andstored them in large barns before loading them on to ships to
returnto Boston.

Dana is author of the American literary classic,
Two Years Before the Mast, which is based on the diary he kept
at sea and was firstpublished in 1841. This book not only describes
in detail the life ofa seaman, but it provides one of the very few
detailed accounts ofearly days in California.

On this voyage Dana spent four months in San
Diego—longer thananywhere else along the way. His famous book
includes manywonderful depictions of San Diego in 1835, including
thefollowing:

“For landing and taking off hides, San Diego
is decidedly the best place in California. The harbour is small and
land-locked, there is no surf; the vessels lie within a cable's
length of the beach, and the beach itself is smooth, hard sand,
without rocks or stones. For these reasons, it is used by all the
vessels in the trade, as a depot.”

* * *

“. . . blessed with a
climate, than which can be no better in the world.”

* * *

“. . .This was a small
adobe building of only one room, in which were liquors, 'dry goods.'
West India goods, shoes, bread, fruits and everything, which is
vendible in California.” (Description
of the grogshop.)

* * *

“.
. .The small settlement lay directly below the fort, composed of
about 40 dark brown looking huts, or houses, and three or four larger
ones white-washed, which belonged to the gente de razon [upper
class].”(View ofSan Diego from the Presidio.)

* * *

“The mission is built of adobe and
plaster. There was something decidedly striking in its appearance: a
number of irregular buildings, connected with one another, and
disposed in the form of a hollow square, with a church at one end,
rising above the rest, with a tower containing five belfries, in each
of which hung a large bell, and with very large rusty iron crosses at
the tops. Just outside of the buildings, and under the walls, stood
20 or 30 small huts, built of straw and of the branches of trees
grouped together, in which a few Indians lived, under the protection
and in the service of the mission” .(Mission San Diego de
Alcala)

Dana returned to San Diego 24 years later and wrote
about the many changes in Twenty-Four Years After. This was
then added to all subsequent editions of Two Years Before the
Mast. The entirebook is available free on line at
www.gutenberg.org/4277.

In addition to his writing, he became a well-known
lawyer, politician and a champion of the downtrodden from seamen to
fugitive slaves.

In San Diego, the Dana Middle School in Point Loma
and RH DanaPlace, which is a short street in Coronado, bear the name
of thisfamous man. This is a limited honor compared to Dana Point
wherehe made only a few short stops on his journey. Dana Point
honorshim with a replica of the brig Pilgrim at the Ocean Institute,
a nine-foot statue in their harbor and a city name.

Currently there is a proposal,spearheaded by Dan
McGeorge of Dan McGeorge Gallery, to build a bronze statue of Dana.
It would be placed along RH Dana Place in Coronado and
portray Dana gazing over to Point Loma where he worked and lived. The
sitewhere he actually lived in Point Loma is now part of the Marine
base. More information is available at the gallery website.

Here
is what Dana had to say as he departed from San Diego for the last
time in 1859:

BAYSIDE TRAIL

“A
last look—yes, last for life—to the beach, the hills, the low
point, the distant town, as we round Point Loma and the first beams
of the light-house strike out towards the setting sun."